Posted by Blind spots are getting worse, ironically because cars are getting safer. In older cars the structure supporting the roof of the car, known as pillars were relatively thin, meaning that they didn’t obstruct the drivers view very much.
On modern cars the pillars are often pretty big. This is because they are now a significant part of the safety cage, and also because they contain both wiring and often airbags.
Because the pillars are big, they can easily conceal hazards, and interestingly, even pretty big vehicles can be completely hidden by them. The reason is simple but worth considering. Just hold your hand at full arms length and see how much of your field of view is blocked. Then move your hand close to your face and see how much less you’re able to see. The window pillar closest to you will block far more of what you can see than the one on the other side of the car. Also, if you sit looking forward and your head remains still, then you look from left to right with just your eyes, you’ll soon realise that you can’t see much more than 180 degrees. In other words, most of what is behind you is hidden.
Good observation can help enormously, because unlike an owl that can rotate its head to see directly behind itself (actually up to 270 degrees), humans can usually manage about 90 degrees of rotation left and right. So, it’s important to turn your head when checking your blind spots.
Your head restraint is also likely to be a significant obstruction to good observation, not just when you turn your head, but because most cars have rear head restraints too, and therefore the area that you can see in your rear view mirror can be limited.
Your wing mirrors should be set correctly to maximise your view, and to help eliminate blind spots. It’s also important that you replace lenses in your wing mirrors if they get broken or cracked. Some modern cars have detectors that effectively look behind into the blind spot and have a small light in the mirror to let drivers know that there is a vehicle approaching from behind. Technology is great, but is no replacement for good observation.
Last week I was following a fairly large van down a country lane. When it arrived at a tee junction with the main road, the driver didn’t bother to stop and look, rather he carried on rolling to turn right onto the main road. Now this junction does not have good visibility, particularly to the left, and combine this with poor observation skills and there was very nearly a crash. A motorcycle came from the left. The rider wasn’t travelling fast thank goodness, but he did have to brake abruptly to avoid hitting the van. The van stopped and there was the usual hand waving expression of annoyance from the motorcyclist and the van then continued.
Now here is where things got interesting. The motorcyclist must have lost his limited marbles at this point and let the red mist descend, because he then followed the van at a distance of no more than about 1 metre, right in the centre of the van, so totally hidden from both the view of the van driver in a blind spot, and utterly unable to see further than the back of the van, a metre away! Had the van driver needed to brake for any reason, the biker would absolutely have smashed into the van. He continued like this for about half a mile, at which point he decided to overtake the van across a junction on the right that the van driver was indicating his intentions of taking.
I’m pretty certain that in his desperation to overtake the van, the biker hadn’t even noticed the flashing indicators on the van. So this time the biker was very lucky that the van driver did actually see him.
Having passed the van the biker then shook his head, again to show his displeasure at the previous incident, but what he did next astonished me. He pulled out his mobile phone from his pocket and pulled it right up in front of his visor so he could presumably read a text or see who was calling. He did this three times over about 500 metres!
So, two lessons here. Firstly, even though the junction was a give way rather than a stop, it’s up to the driver to use good roadcraft and in this instance should have stopped. The second, is that if someone does something stupid and irritates you, take a deep breath and be thankful that you’re ok, rather than letting the red mist take over.